Stillwater, Minnesota

“ Wisconsin and the prospective organization of Minnesota Territory, the development of the lumbering business and the formal opening of the government lands to entry, gave an impetus to immigration. Stillwater profited largely by this immigration, it being an objective point. Population increased. The village was regularly surveyed and platted in the fall of 1848, Harvey Wilson, surveyor. ”

“ I came to Mankato in the year 1853 on the Steamer Clarion from St. Paul. I was eleven years old. My father, Hoxey Rathbun, had left us at St. Paul while he looked for a place to locate. He went first to Stillwater and St. Anthony, but finally decided to locate at the Great Bend of the Minnesota River. We landed about four o'clock in the morning, and father took us to a little shack he had built on the brow of the hill west of Front Street near the place where the old Tourtelotte Hospital used to be. ”

“ There was a road from Point Douglas through Taylor's Falls to Fond du Lac. It went through Stillwater and Sunrise Prairie, too. I used to watch it as [Pg 50] the Indians passed back and forth on it and wish I could go to the end of it. It seemed to me that Adventure waited there.
We used to go to dances and dance the threestep waltz and French four with a circle of fours all around the room, and many other old style dances, too. We put in all the pretty fancy steps in the cotillion. No prettier sight could be than a young girl, with arms circled above her head, jigging on the corners. ”

“ Paul, and what are the facilities of travel to places beyond? These are questions which I suppose some would like to have answered. There is a road to Stillwater, and a stage, which I believe runs daily. That is the route now often taken to Lake Superior. This morning three men came in on that stage from Superior, who have been a week on the journey. The great highway of the territory extends as far as Crow Wing, 130 miles north of here. It passes St. Anthony and several important towns on the eastern bank of the Mississippi. ”

“ He came to Stillwater in 1848, where he engaged in merchandising and farming. He removed to Minneapolis in 1876, where he is at present engaged in selling goods. He was married to C. Jewell, April, 1855. Mr. Parsons has ever been an exemplary man.
Albert Stimson.—A native of York county, Maine, Mr. Stimson spent there his early life, and, after a few years in New Brunswick, came to Stillwater in 1849. He followed lumbering in his native state and on the St. Croix. He served as surveyor general of the First district, Minnesota, three years. ”

“ The town of St. Paul surveyed, platted and recorded in the St. Croix county register of deeds' office. First improvement of the water power at falls of St. Anthony. Treaty with the Chippewas at Fond du Lac, August 2d. Treaty with the Pillagers at Leech Lake, August 21st.
1848. May 29th, Wisconsin admitted. August 26th, the "Stillwater Convention" held, to take measures for a separate territorial organization. October 30th, H. H. Sibley elected delegate to Congress.
1850. Great flood on the Mississippi. Minnesota river navigated by steamboats. Census of Minnesota shows population of 4,780. ”

“ Paul. Three of us took passage on the Yankee. She was really more of a freight than a passenger boat. She only made three trips to St. Paul that year. We bought wood along the way, anywheres we could see a few sticks that some settler had cut. The Indians always came down [Pg 32] to see us wherever we stopped. I did not take much of a fancy to them devils, even then. It was so cold the fifteenth day of October that the Captain was afraid that his boat would freeze in, so would go no further and dumped us in Stillwater. Cold! ”

“ Of the 14,358 coloured inhabitants, 4959 were negroes and 9182 Indians, 8457 of whom lived on reservations. The urban population (i.e. inhabitants of cities of 8000 or over) was 26·8% of the total population, as compared with 28·2% in 1890. By the state census of 1905 the population of the principal cities was as follows: Minneapolis, 261,954; St Paul, 197,023; Duluth, 64,942; Winona, 20,334; Stillwater, 12,435; and Mankato, 10,996; by the same census four other cities, all in the mining region in the north-east, had passed the 5000 limit, viz. ”

“ The humblest painter of real life, if he could have his desire, would select a picturesque background for his figures; but events have an inexorable fashion for choosing their own landscape. In the present instance it is reluctantly conceded that there are few uglier or more commonplace towns in New England than Stillwater,--a straggling, overgrown village, with whose rural aspects are curiously blended something of the grimness and squalor of certain shabby city neighborhoods. ”

“ The town stands on the front of this low plateau, along the channel of the river, and has a population of nine thousand people, counting the nomadic lumbermen, who live half the year in the piny woods many hundred miles to the north, and the other half are floating on the rafts down the river; a rough but useful people, who betimes will lose their heads and winter's wages in a single drunken fray, which they seem to consider the highest pleasure vouchsafed to them each season as they return to the walks of civilized life. ”

“ Each branch bears a name which grew out of its most conspicuous characteristic, and little timber grows in the valley but crowds close to the base of the mountains. So the broad plateaus that lie between the tributaries of the Stillwater make wonderful grazing ground, while the creeks running down the cañons are bordered with willows and quaking aspen groves that give shelter to the cattle and horses that tread down the trails from higher ground to water. ”

“ Bunker, sarcastically.
"I'll always love my own people, but I won't be blind to their faults. We lack culture and repose."
"You may be right, Indy," said Mr. Stillwater, hitherto a silent listener. "But if you keep cultivating a field of wheat right along, you'll cultivate it till it doesn't produce anything. They're running to seed fast here—and we're still bearing strong. Repose! Let them have it. Thank heaven, we youngsters are always on our feet. Now, mother!" Mrs. Stillwater was crying. At the sight of her tears Indiana capitulated. ”

“ During these local and national disturbances the material prosperity of the State was unabated. Notwithstanding the heavy cost of the civil war and the Sioux massacre, the census of 1865 showed a population of 250,099. Railroad construction began to be energetically carried forward; in 1870 329 miles were made and 1096 miles were in operation; a road to Lake Superior was completed, and the Northern Pacific was fairly under way. In 1873-76, and to some extent in 1877, successive visitations of locusts destroyed the crops of the south-western counties. ”

“ The railroad has a flag station at the farm known as Hopkins station.
STILLWATER.
Stillwater comprises fractional township 30, range 20, excepting the site of the city of Stillwater. The surface is rolling and the soil good. It is well watered with rivulets and small lakes. The first settlers in the town outside the city limits were the Lymans, consisting of the father (Cornelius) and two sons, C. Storrs and D. P., Charles Macy, W. T. Boutwell, Sebastian Marty, Wm. ”

“ The deer were everywhere and game of all kinds bountiful. The soldier told me that no white man could settle here anywhere for ten miles as it was all in the Fort Snelling reservation. That is why the town of St. Anthony was built on the east side of the river instead of on the west side and why there was no town on this side of the river for many years after. We saw some Sioux tepees and met the Indians constantly. They were a fine sturdy race, with fine features and smiling faces. The soldier said they could be depended on and never broke a promise. ”

“ On the other hand, speaking from personal observation, we know that the land is uniformly above the average in fertility, productiveness, and beauty.
Another, a more recent link of road, binding the city to the northeast and east as firmly as does the other to the southwest, is that known as the Lake Superior and Mississippi Road, reaching one hundred and fifty miles to the young city of Duluth, standing at the head of the great lakes, whence cheap transportation to the Atlantic seaboard may be had for all the products of the Northwest. ”

“ Croix River near Hudson, Wisconsin and thence extending in a westerly direction to a point on the easterly limits of the city of St. Paul and then beginning at a point on the westerly limits of the city of Minneapolis and thence extending in a westerly direction to a point on Route No. 6 at Madison, affording St. Paul, Minneapolis, Hopkins, Norwood, Glencoe, Olivia, Granite Falls, Montevideo, Dawson, Madison and intervening and adjacent communities a reasonable means of communication, each with the other and other places within the State. ”

“ The Lake Superior synclinal trough is occupied by Cambrian sandstones and limestones, and Ordovician rocks occur in the southeastern part of the State, consisting of the Saint Peter sandstone beds covered with Trenton limestone, a combination which has given rise to the bluffs along this part of the Mississippi, and to the Falls of Saint Anthony. Silurian rocks occur in the valley of the Red River and in some of the southeastern counties, and slight cretaceous deposits are found in various parts of the State. ”

“ Anthony as equalling Minneapolis as a place of residence in point of health. Even in the latter city it is important that a home be had as remote from the neighborhood of the Falls as is convenient. Its adaptability to the needs of the invalid consists more in the walks and drives, the ample boarding-house and hotel accommodations, good markets, and cheerful, pleasant society, than in the particular location of the town itself or in the character of the soil on which it is built. ”

“ What do you care—and ma and Grandma Chazy and—and I'll be left with no one to look after us." She buried her face in her muff, making piteous little gulps.
"I'm a fool," thought Stillwater, patting her on the back. "The idea of that little thing takin' it so to heart. I didn't think she was old enough to realize things like that. None of us know how much there is in Indiana." His heart swelled with gratitude at this proof of devotion from his only child.
"Now, Indiana, don't lose your grip like this. I'm going, I tell you. I'm going on this trip. There isn't anything on earth that'll stop me. ”

“ Its area, including half of the lakes, straits, and rivers along its boundaries, except Rainy Lake and Lake of the Woods, amounts to 83,365 square miles.
The surface of Minnesota is diversified by few elevations of any great height. In general it is an undulating plain, breaking in some sections into rolling prairie, and traversed by belts of timber. It has an average elevation above sea-level of about 1000 feet. ”

“ Minnesota as a state is just in the age of development. She is rising to power and influence. Much depends upon our legislature, more than depended upon the legislature of New York when, actuated by good counsels it connected the waters of the [Pg 678] Hudson with those of Lake Erie by the 'Clinton Ditch,' so called in derision by the enemies of the measure. But the wisdom of Dewitt Clinton, the originator of that famous waterway, advanced the settlement of the great West at least a quarter of a century. ”

“ Steele and the government. The reservation was reduced to a little more than fifteen hundred acres. A grant of ten acres was made to the little Catholic church at Mendota, for a cemetery, and other small tracts were reserved about the Falls of Minnehaha and elsewhere, and all the balance was conveyed to Mr. Steele, he releasing the government from all claims and demands. The action of the secretary of war in carrying out this settlement was approved by the president in 1871.
The fort was one of the best structures of the kind ever erected in the West. ”

“ It might be entirely safe to assume that the people of Minnesota, as a whole, are distinguished by a more aesthetic character than their neighbors living in the nearly dead level country below them. It is but reasonable to suppose that some, at least, in seeking new homes, would give a preference to attractive localities, even at the sacrifice of something of fertility; which is, to some extent, the case; as the low flat lands of the rivers below are unrivalled in their power of production—whether it be of the grains of wheat or disease. ”

“ Stillwater then shook hands with Thurston, who had met the onslaught calm and smiling, though inwardly rejoiced for his wife's sake.
"Come," said Mrs. Bunker, with a beaming face, "pass her round."
"You dear old things," cried Indiana, "this is what I call a surprise! Now sit down, all of you." She pulled her father and mother down on the lounge, sitting between them. Mrs. Stillwater gazed at her, speechless with happiness. Stillwater smoothed her hair tenderly, pressing her head against his breast. "Tell me all the news. How's everybody at home? Anybody engaged—or married? ”

“ The state, recognizing its obligation to these men, determined to provide a home for their comfort and maintenance. By an act of the legislature, passed March 2d of that year, provision was made for the purchase of a site and the erection of suitable buildings for that purpose. The act provided for bids for the purpose of a site, and also authorized the acceptance of donations for that purpose. Minneapolis responded handsomely, by offering fifty-one acres of its beautiful Minnehaha park as a donation. ”